Is my pool going to be green?

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Her pool boy

Her pool boy

0
May 19, 2016
129
St Catharines, Ontario, Canada
Pool Size
95000
Surface
Vinyl
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
So everything was going fine with the new liner installation until Friday when the technician that was cutting in the scimmer and jets broke one of the screw fittings on a jet. So of course the pool had to be drained to below the jets to do the repair, and being a long weekend up in Canada, of course the repair can't be done until Tuesday, earliest. So here I sit with a beautiful new liner, see profile picture, and a pool with water just below the jets. Wondering if the water is going to be green by the time I start to circulate it by late Tuesday, which is my best case scenario. I don't have my test kit yet, as I have just joined this site...but do know that I have no free chlorine in the pool, or stabilizer. My plan is to sanitize with bleach, but was going to circulate the new water for about a week prior to adjusting, or measuring any other levels. My questions is...is my pool going to be green by Tuesday night? Forecast is sunny, temp 24 degrees C, or 75F. The pool water is cold. 55F. As I filled the pool with the hose. I am not keen on dumping bleach in the pool since it is not circulating, and my new liner looks so good...I would hate to do anything to ruin that. Any advice?
 
You don't need to add anything while it is filling. But, once full and pump is going add 30 ppm of CYA/stabilizer and start maintaining chlorine at target, Chlorine CYA Chart If the pump won't operational when full the break out the paddle, broom or whater and get some chlorine in there.

More on adding CYA and other chemicals here, Pool School - Recommended Pool Chemicals
 
So the pool guy has just finished installing the broken jet, and the pool is filling again. I managed to keep the water clear all weekend by circulating a bit of bleach in the water with a couple of fountain pumps at each end, and running my new robot cleaner each day to keep the pool as clean as possible, love the new robot cleaner... I will need to add about 4000 gallons before I can start to circulate the water through the filter with the pump. Probably take about 6 hours. First thing I want to do is bring the CYA levels up as it is a zero right now. Debating if I should get liquid stabilizer or the powder, any advise on which I should use?
 
Thanks, got the powder stabilizer as you were right...much cheaper for what I need based on what the pool math. I am filling up some old socks as we speak as the water level is still a few hours away from being able to circulate. So here is the back story.

when I bought the house in 2011 it had a pool, and you guest it I had never had a pool. When we got the house the liner was wrinkled and we thought it was because of ground water getting behind the liner, but that wasn't the case. The previous owner had no clue what to do and wrinkled the liner with chemicals. But I knew no better at the time. The pool was being sanitized with Bromine, and being shocked with chlorine once a week...which is the regiment I feel into as well. I knew from research that I could not convert my pool from Bromine to Chlorine, unless I changed all the water, so I continued to use Bromine until now....when we decide it was time to change the liner, and update the equipment and now I can use the TFPC method. So I am new to using chlorine. If it wasn't for this site I would be preparing my trichlor pucks and have no idea what CYA was or the effects on the FC. So thanks TFP. I don't have my test kit yet, am waiting for Amazon to deliver, but will test water at pool store and share my results.
 

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If you know your CYA is zero, you can use pucks for now. We don't really say you have to throw them away around here, you just need to know what effect they have on your chemistry. Many here use them when they go on vacation, for example.
 
Got my CYA levels up but will check tomorrow when I test my water at the Pool Store how accurate the Pool Math Calculator is...I am assuming it will be bang on...but we will see. if the reading is 19..Pool Math wins. I will post all my levels tomorrow but would say things are looking pretty good...and no, the pool won't be green. As you can see in my profile pic it looks crystal clear.
 
As it turns out I have underestimated the volume of water in my pool. The volume is 120000 litres, which is 37500 us gals. I was doing my calculations based on imperial gallons, which obviously made my Pool Math calculations wrong, but noticed you have a "metric" tab...thank you, saves me converting everything as the metric systems it's what we see on our packaging " up here". Anyway...that has solved it and I am ready to start the TFPC method. My Taylor 2006 doesn't arrive until next week so had to us the Pool Store to get accurate readings on my water. They have a some good equipment to test the water and provide a computerized printout of the report, with recommended steps to follow to correct the water problems. At this point I have not followed any of their instructions as I wanted to post the results here to get other opinions on what I should do to balance my water.

FC .55 Total C .78. CC .23
ph 7.7 TA 85 ppm
Hardness, which I assume is CH 135 ppm
CYA 9 ppm copper 0 ppm Iron .2 ppm

presently I am adding Stabilizer to get it to 30 ppm. Store recommends I shock, but I am not sure the CC calls for a shock. They are also recommending a product call Trol 4 kg, and a product called Cal 7 kg.

any help and advice would be much appreciated as I am new to chlorine and new to TFPC.
 
Since you have iron in your water you will need to add a sequestrant to keep it in solution as you raise the chlorine level. Sequestrants based on HEDP, phosphonic acid, or phosphonic acid derivatives are the most effective.
You don't need the Trol, it is for raising TA and yours is fine where it is. Cal is probably calcium and you do not need that either. 135ppm is fine for a vinyl liner pool.

You do need to raise the chlorine but add the sequestrant first. Are you using well water to fill the pool?
 
Can't imagine why they would want me to take my ph to the max, and move my calcium into the range of a plaster pool, and recommend I spend $75 on chemicals for my pool?..and I thought they were here to help, obviously only themselves. Phosphonic acid? Why do I want to keep the iron, in a solution while I raise my chlorine levels? Do I have to do that everything I raise the chlorine? Can you explain more or direct to where I can get more information. And no, am not on a well...city water.
 
Since you are on city water I would double check the iron level in your pool. I suggested a sequestrant based on the iron level you reported. It is unusual for city water to have iron in it, that is why I asked if you used well water, where iron is much more common. The problem with iron is that when chlorine levels are high enough the iron will oxidize and fall out of solution, depositing on the surface of your pool as stains. Sequestrant keeps the iron in solution so the pool doesn't develop iron stains. As long as you have iron in the water you will need to maintain sequestrant in the pool. The sequestrant will have dosage recommendations on the label. This is why you should check and make sure there really is iron in the pool. If it still tests positive then you will need to use the sequestrant.

As far as why they made some of the recommendations they have made, that is usually because they use a computerized system to test the water and it does not necessarily coordinate the recommendations and if they enter your pool into the system incorrectly it will not give the correct recommendations. Either the pool was entered as a plaster pool or their computer program does not look at whether the pool is vinyl or plaster.
 
An astounding number of people here have become firmly convinced that "Pool $tore" and "accurate readings" seldom, if ever, go together. I tried the same pool water at five different Pool $tores and got five different sets of results and recommendations. Four of them had fancy computer printouts. At one of them, the attendant scratched out some of the computer recommendations and wrote out his own recommendations (he turned out the closest to correct). One of them kept their back to me, poured some of my sample into a trough that already had water in it, dipped a 4in1 guess-strip into it, glanced at it and quickly threw it under the bench. He turned around and said, "no worries, mate, just add a bag of salt and some phosphate remover." The dipstick he used doesn't do salt or phosphates.

You'll love having your own test kit! :) And glad you found TFP! Welcome. :)
 

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